Every time we get ready to leave a town, I look for an excuse to stay another day. Before we went to bed last night, Bunny said if it was raining or snowing, she wasn’t getting up. I wanted her to have her much needed rest today. I could hear the wind blowing hard when I woke up. I was hopeful for her, but when I looked out, I could only see blue skies and sunshine. Damn our luck.
We met Wolf and Blue’s Clues for breakfast at 7:30. BC has been wanting a Lumberjack Slam for a couple of weeks, so we felt the lad had finally earned it. The hotel we are staying at has a 9 o’clock shuttle back to the trailhead which BC had already signed us up for. We leisurely stuffed ourselves knowing that we had plenty of time to finish up our packing and enjoy our porcelain one last time.
The shuttle dropped us off and the seven of us in it were hiking at 9:17. Bunny and I generously allowed everyone to start before us figuring that this would save us having to step off the trail as each one passed us. Of course, Wolf was first down the trail with BC hot on his tail. We never saw them again.
Our target campsite was just a little over 13 miles out. If we are staying on schedule to finish by October 1, we should be right at 687.5 miles in at the end of today. Instead, we are exactly 487 miles in. We are running a deficit of 200 miles. We have to pick up our game a bit and start erasing our deficit, as well as start to run a surplus to “pay” for any additional zero days we plan to take. The possibility of jumping to Oregon would help by giving us some better terrain to make up miles as well as eliminating the need to finish by mid-September (which would add another 187.5 miles to our deficit). For now, we’ll be happy that we reduced our shortage by 0.6 miles today—baby steps.
We expected to have a lot of people pass us today, but it didn’t happen. Has the bubble finally burst and we’re spreading out? The trail and terrain today were very reasonable. We could easily have shot for 17 miles and made it to another water source. However, the plan was to carry water 4 miles to our camp tonight. I hate to carry more than a liter of water, but if I do, I’m going to use it and not dump it. We considered not getting more than a liter of water and pushing on, but we didn’t want to change plans unilaterally.
Leaving Big Bear, we did only carry 1 liter each. The first water source was 9 miles in. We had only seen a few day hikers on the trail, but when we stopped to fill up, 5 other thru-hikers quickly caught up to us. We met Sun Bear who we had camped with at Strawberry Camp. We also met another couple we had ridden the shuttle with this morning, Kilo and Double Take. They are planning on going to the same campsite as we are. How could there be this many people behind us and none of them are passing us? Could we possibly be getting stronger?
It was only 4.2 miles to camp after water. Since we were first at the stream, we the first to leave, but we fully expected everyone to pass us soon enough. It didn’t happen that way. We met a local out for a day hike and slowly walked and talked with Tom for about 1/2 mile. He was originally from Orange County but had moved up here 15 years ago to raise their kids in a less hectic environment. When we left him at Cougar Crest Trail which leads back down to Big Bear, no one had passed us yet. Curiouser and curiouser.
Now we only had a mile and a half to camp. We got to where we thought the camp would be, but didn’t see anyone. Perhaps Wolf and BC had been going so fast they missed the turn and headed down Cougar Crest. That didn’t seem likely. We checked our Gut and saw that we had actually walked past the camp. We went back, but, still, no one was there. We tried texting and calling Wolf and BC but got no replies. We decided to stick with the plan and set up camp. We hadn’t carried 5+ liters of water to walk on to the next water source.
We looked around to see if we had missed a note or any signs. It’s not like Wolf to deviate from a plan. Eventually, we did get a text message from him in reply to our phone calls and texts. They had decided to push on another 6 miles to the next camp. We always knew it was just a matter of time before they ditched us. We start each day with the understanding that when we say goodbye in the morning, it could be the last goodbye. Now, with Ivy gone, it has happened. Our first PCT tramily has bit the dust.
Something else interesting happened today. After having a permanent hiking companion for over 2 years, whom we thought we knew well, we were shocked to learn everything we knew about that companion has been in error. I’m talking, of course, of Bunny’s bunny. Today, out of the blue, he announced that he is really a she and wants to be called “Beatrix” henceforth. In all honesty, we have always respected bunny’s privacy and never thoroughly checked between “her” legs. My world is turning upside down.
We should probably have pushed on. We found ourselves completely done with everything that needed to be done by 5. It is nice to not be rushed, but it’s kind of boring sitting in camp with over 2 hours of sunlight remaining. From now on, we will probably hike until 5 before setting up camp. We’ll kick up our daily average to the 16-18 mile range until we get to Acton. In the mean time, we’ll try to figure out where we’re going to flop to next. All I’ve got is Bunny and Beatrix—the hormonal shift is palatable.
EFG